Two years ago, Soren Stevenson lost to incumbent Andrea Jenkins by 38 votes. This year Andrea Jenkins did not run for re-election; it’s an open seat. On the ballot:

Soren Stevenson (DFL-endorsed)
Josh Bassais (DFL)
Philip Galberth (Independent)
Bob Sullentrop (Republican)

Bob Sullentrop (Republican)

Bob is a local Republican who has run for a bunch of stuff, including Park Board (2017), Ward 8 City Council (2021), Ward 8 City Council again (2023), and Minnesota House 62B (2024). In 2024 I e-mailed all the people running as Republicans to ask who they thought won the 2020 Presidential Election and Bob was among the large majority who simply did not respond to my e-mail. In 2023 his campaign site talked about his hatred of bike lanes; this year he mostly talks about how much he hates the DSA. (“It is Bob’s belief that Democratic Socialists are extremely radical Democrats and at least some of them are indistinguishable from communists.”) I would not rank Bob.

Philip Galberth (Independent)

Philip appears to have no information online at all (no website, no social media) other than possibly a LinkedIn. Seriously, why do people do this. It costs $250 to file! With that money, you could go buy 50 chocolate croissants from Street Wheat, eat five, and hand out the other 45 to everyone else waiting in line and it would almost certainly bring you more joy than being on a ballot for a job you don’t actually seem to want enough to even bother setting up a website.

I sent him an e-mail asking if he had a website or any information he wanted to share about himself. He said he graduated from Washburn and owns a home. “The other candidates have released visions on how they want to reshape the city in their image. I prefer to have the voters tell me how they want their city to work. The city council should work for them and not tell them how the city should function. ‘Represent not rule,’ as they say.”

He went on to say that the questionnaires asked him questions about public safety, climate, and affordable housing, which are not concerns expressed by the people he’s talked to, who ask about plowing, street lights, pot holes, plastic bollards, the cost of trash disposal if HERC is shut down, and park maintenance. He finished with “As your potential representative on the council, what could I do for you?” If anyone in Ward 8 wants to e-mail him their policy questions, his address is listed on his campaign filing. FYI, his e-mail to me arrived looking like it had been redacted by the FBI or something, I don’t know what he did with his formatting but in order to read it I had to copy & paste without formatting, basically. You may need to do the same. (I do not recommend ranking him.)

Josh Bassais (DFL)

Josh Bassais is a good illustration of why I pay so much more attention to endorsements and questionnaires than what you say on your website. His website is mostly pretty inoffensive other than being difficult to read (light-blue-text on white background), he emphasizes public safety that doesn’t center police and so on. However, he’s endorsed by All of Mpls/We Love Mpls/Thrive Mpls (centrist groups heavily funded by suburban landlords, and you can get more details in my Ward 2 post) and the more I dug the more weird nastiness and hypocrisy I found:

• He’s endorsed by all my least favorite City Council reps, my least favorite former mayor (Sharon Sayles-Belton), an organization of realtors, and NOT the union he apparently used to work for (LiUNA, which endorsed Soren.)
  
• His campaign manager is Julius Hernandez, who previously managed campaigns for Republican-pretending-to-be-a-Democrat Victor Martinez and has worked for actual straight up Republicans.
  
• He got called out at the the DFL convention for trying to talk up his support for renter protections despite saying on his We Heart Mpls questionnaire that he did not support any additional protections for renters. (Listening to that answer he’s pretty carefully dancing around the idea of additional protections — he talks about enforcing existing protections and how he would support a “tenant’s union” — while trying to use rhetoric to sound more left-wing than he is, like talking about “standing in solidarity” and “pounding the table.” Trying to use left-wing rhetoric to describe centrist positions strikes me as a bad sign, like you’re both a centrist and you’re trying to hide it from people because you know the people you’re trying to convince to vote for you won’t like your actual positions.)
  
• Asked “bike lanes: love ’em or leave ’em” in the short-answers section of a forum he responded, “In July and August I love them, but otherwise … it depends.” I want to call out two things about that response. First, the idea that July and August are the best months for biking is just weird; I think of June and September as our perfect biking months, sunny and pleasant and not excessively hot. The second thing, though, is that this is a response that appears to centers his take on bike lanes on his personal experiences with biking. I don’t bike much but I want there to be safe, well-maintained, pleasant bike lanes and biking infrastructure throughout the metro because many other people bike. Some of them year round, in fact. I love bike lanes because they keep other people safe, and that’s a good enough reason to love bike lanes. Year round!
  
• His website talks a lot about affordable housing, but has nothing on there about homelessness. On his We Heart Mpls questionnaire he says his solution to encampments is to “Address the root cause, drug addiction and mental health,” with zero details on how exactly he wants to address drug addiction and mental health. He did not respond to the Neighbors for More Neighbors questionnaire (Soren did.) My expectation, if he were elected, is that he would continue the Frey policy of periodically clearing encampments in an attempt to harass unhoused people into moving them out of sight, while making noise about root causes and doing absolutely nothing to make addiction treatment and mental health treatment more available to those who need and want them.
  
• His website puts accountability up front when talking about policing. His responses to the We Heart Mpls questionnaire tell a different story; that questionnaire asks directly whether you feel that the city’s more pressing issue currently is staffing levels or police accountability, and he responses that it was staffing levels. (Hey, fun fact: the police officer who shot Soren Stevenson in the face with a rubber bullet at close range while Soren was peacefully protesting was not disciplined in any way and still works for MPD.)

Anyway — I think Josh Bassais is an empty suit who’s pals with a bunch of people I deeply dislike, and I think he would be a rubber stamp for Frey. I would not rank him.

Soren Stevenson (DFL-endorsed)

I liked Soren Stevenson two years ago and was planning to doorknock for him; I wound up not going out that day because my husband came down with COVID and I didn’t want to risk exposing other people. Anyway, I’m sorry, clearly if I had gone out I’d have found you 38 more votes.

Soren Stevenson had an eye shot out by the Minneapolis Police during a protest after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd; on police accountability specifically, I trust him a lot. He’s worked as a lobbyist for the Minnesota Justice Coalition and doing street outreach for Agate Housing and Services. One thing that struck me was that his ideas on homelessness include dedicated shelter beds for trans and gender-nonconforming people; I wonder if his awareness around this specific issue is partly from working with people for whom shelters are just not safe.

Soren is someone who has walked the walk in a whole lot of extremely tangible ways and honestly, working in street outreach is a hell of a background for someone who wants to do useful policy work on homelessness. (I have a friend who did street outreach and then lobbying — he’s now retired — and he was, for decades, someone with a long list of useful and practical ideas for addressing unsheltered homelessness.)

I would absolutely vote for Soren, and I am really excited to see him on the Minneapolis City Council.

I have a new book coming out next June! This one is not YA; it’s a near-future thriller about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on site to deliver babies. You can pre-order it right now if you want.

I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi but instead encourage people who want to reward all my hard work to donate to fundraisers. This year I’m fundraising for YouthLink. YouthLink is a Minneapolis nonprofit that helps youth (ages 16-24) who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. (Here’s their website.) I have seen some of the work they do and been really impressed. (An early donor to the fundraiser added a comment: “YouthLink was incredible instrumental in my assistance of a friend to escape a bad family situation in Florida with little more than a computer and a state ID. Thanks to YouthLink and their knowledge of resources my friend was able to get a mailing address (which was essential in getting a debit card and formal identification documents), healthcare, hot meals, an internship at a local company, and even furniture for their new apartment.” — That is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about!)

I set up a fundraiser with a specific goal mainly because seeing the money raised helps motivate me. (Having external motivation helps! This is a lot of work.)